2016 Purdue Football Coaching Search Favorites: (Co-)#1 Bo Pelini
Candidate Tier #1
Overall Rank: Tied for #1 with Western Kentucky’s Jeff Brohm
Category: BS Favorites, Insane Person Edition
Who Is He?
Bo “What the F*ck Are You Looking at?!” Pelini, brother of Carl and owner of Anya the cat.
Long Live Anya
[Ed. note: The most stunning fact in the history of facts is that Bo Pelini is only 48 years old. I could have *sworn* he was, at minimum, 83.]
Why would he be successful at Purdue?
Pelini is experienced at all levels. In the NFL he was a DB and LB coach across multiple teams. In college he was a DC at Nebraska, a co-DC at Oklahoma, a DC at LSU, then the HC at Nebraska. He’s been very successful at each stop. For example, the year before he went to Nebraska, the Huskers’ defense was rated 55th nationally. He improved the squad to 11th.
He left after that season following a coaching transitions and Nebraska’s defensive ranking subsequently fell to 56th. He’s experienced similar success as a DC at his other stops.
Pelini only got more successful as his head coach years progressed. He spent seven full seasons at Nebraska and failed to win fewer than nine games. He won four conference division titles and his teams finished the season ranked six of his seven seasons as HC.
He’s also a better recruiter than people give him credit for. Yeah, he’s not a barn-storming force like Ed Orgeron, but I’ll take a guy that can consistently recruit to the top half of the conference. At Nebraska he consistently recruited within the top-4 of the conference. Even if he gives Purdue 80% of that, it’s still a vast improvement, and something Purdue hasn’t seen since the early half of the Tiller era.
Why could he flop at Purdue?
He’s kind of a crazy person.
He’s verbally abusive, and the culture of college sports has changed a lot even in the two years since he left HM football. He’ll be under a bit of a microscope, at least more so than he is at Youngstown State, and if another tape surfaces like that of him calling his bosses at Nebraska a word that you won’t see pass even my salty mouth, Purdue would have to do something and would look foolish for putting themselves in this situation. Bobinski would have to realize the fact that he would be hiring someone who would eventually hate his guts.
His stops in college football have been at places like LSU, Oklahoma, and Nebraska, places where college football is so different than how it is at Purdue that it might as well be a different sport. You can’t coach/recruit/interact with the community at Purdue in the same way you do at a school like the three I mentioned. Hazell tried, and all it earned him was a pink slip and the title of one of the worst coaches in B1G history.
Would he come to Purdue?
I think so, for the right dollar amount. He’s already making just shy of $3M at Youngstown State, due to a weird arrangement with Nebraska following his termination. So the money would have to be right.
And I’m guessing he’s fairly eager to get back into P5 coaching, and maybe Purdue would be a nice intermediate step to something bigger. Rumor has it that he is interested, but that could also be a ploy to drum up interest. I guess we’ll see.
